The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-22
ABOUT NOVELS.
Philadelphia Call.


 conclusion because think the popu- lar appetite has palled upon sensa- tional literature and realistic drama. On the contrary, a large majority of the novel-readers and play-goer de- mand more and more of it. Their tastes have been so seasoned that any thing which savers of the natural is nauseous to their deteriorated minds. The trouble is with the novelists and dramatists. They have reached sub- lime CD point, beyond which they cannot go without becoming intensely ridiculous. Indeed, many of them are doing this, and I have frequently to laugh heartily at what I am sure was never intended by the author to be funny.
 A novelist of the present time would not dare, unless he desired to provoke popular wrath, to speak about his heroine sitting on the back porch or in the parlor of an evening. That is too much like what people see every evening of their own ordinary lives. They must have something else. l have just skinned through a book that gives It to them in great shape. l will mention an instance An entire chapter is devoted to description of the "heroine meandcring along through grove of trees on q dark night" The modern heroine has a penchant for perambulating by her self at night through groves. She'd rather do it than to go along Chest nut street with her best young man fifty times, with plate of ice cream each time. Then again the grove must always be composed of trees. That's to give the leaves a chance to rustic at the proper time, either Co frighten the maiden or conceal the footsteps of the villain who invariably shares the grove of trees with her. If the leaves rustic loud enough it will also serve to drown the heroine's screams when the dark browed, sinister-eyed, forbidding- faced man carries her off. The nights, too, must be seasoned with a qualifying adverb. They are dark nights. No plain, ordinary, every day night will suffice. It must be dark even unto blackness.
 An, mel The novel of to-day is responsible for some remarkable, not to say startling, utterances. The good old English of Edward Everett or Charles Dickens is summed by the modern novelist. I recall the follow ing sentence which I read some time ago in a-not yellow, even that is too tame-Nile-green-cov pamphlet. It was this: "The sun had set and it was eveningw You will readily ob- serve that the writer deftly conveys the idea of most extraordinary astro- nomical phenomenon, and it serves to illustrate to what straits the authors of the romances of the period are driven to keep pace with the desire of the reading public for something sen- sational. It is only in real life now that such a commonplace occurrence as an evening coming after a sunrise, or sun setting in the morning, will be tolerated.
 am seriously cogitating of writing novel myself, in which the main in- cident will be a sunrise and sunset at the same time in the same place. To be sure, will require two suns but l am convinced public thirsting for astronomical novelties will not quibble about an extra sun, especially if wipe out the moon and few stars. l will also have new grove scene. I will keep the trees, but will let them grow down instead of up. Then I will dig huge cave, into which the tops of the trees will grow, SO that when the heroine wants lonely promenade she can go down into the cavern and walk through the tops of the branches. Another advantage will be that she can have dark night requires one. The cave will always be full of dark night, and there won't be any necessity for rustling the leaves to neutralize her cries. The twelve feet of earth that surrounds the dark night will do all that. Good solid mud is an elegant non- conductor of maidenly shrieks.
 will burden you with one more quotation and then release you for the day. This occurs in book that has recently enjoyed widespread reputa- tion: "It was high noon. Not a cloud was to be seen in the clear sky, and the sun shone brightly" You will remember it was high noon. Not twelve o'clock, midday noon. Not an afternoon. But high noon. Another fact worthy of notoriety is that there wasn't cloud in the clear sky and also that the sun shone not withstanding all this intense degree of cloudless clearness. It shone brightly, too. It didn't pretend to shine, or shine duly, as it might have done had not the nonestness of cloud lets clarified the royal skyness. That's the way my two suns shall shine. They'll shine % brightly that you'll